Broadband Saturable Absorption of Graphene Oxide Thin Film and Its Application in Pulsed Fiber Lasers

Author

Xiaohui Li ; Yulong Tang ; Zhiyu Yan ; Yue Wang ; Bo Meng ; Guozhen Liang ; Handong Sun ; Xia Yu ; Ying Zhang ; Xueping Cheng ; Qi Jie Wang

Author_Institution

Sch. of Electr. & Electron. Eng., Nanyang Technol. Univ., Singapore, Singapore

Volume

20

Issue

5

fYear

2014

fDate

Sept.-Oct. 2014

Firstpage

441

Lastpage

447

Abstract

Graphene oxide (GO) has been used for optical intensity manipulation and short pulse shaping. Most interestingly, it can be used as a broadband light absorber. Such property has been systematically investigated in this paper, in a broad wavelength range from 1 to 2-μm. We fabricated one type of GO/polyvinyl alcohol (GO/PVA) film and use it as a saturable absorber (SA) in Er-, Yb-, and Tm-doped fiber ring lasers, respectively, to build pulsed fiber lasers. It is demonstrated that broad range of mode-locking in the 1-μm and 1.5-μm regions can be obtained. In addition, Q-switching around wavelength of 1870 nm can be obtained in a Tm-doped fiber ring lasers. To the best our knowledge, this is the broadest wavelength regime in which one type of GO SA film can be used to build all-fiber pulsed ring lasers.

Keywords

Q-switching; carbon compounds; erbium; fibre lasers; graphene; laser mode locking; optical fabrication; optical films; optical polymers; optical saturable absorption; ring lasers; thin films; thulium; ytterbium; Er; Q-switching; Tm; Yb; all-fiber pulsed ring lasers; broadband light absorber; broadband saturable absorption; graphene oxide-polyvinyl alcohol thin film fabrication; laser mode-locking; optical intensity manipulation; short pulse shaping; thulium-doped fiber ring lasers; wavelength 1 mum to 2 mum; ytterbium-doped fiber ring lasers; Fiber lasers; Films; Laser excitation; Laser mode locking; Optical fiber dispersion; Pump lasers; Fiber lasers; Q-switching; graphene oxide; mode-locking; modulation depth;

fLanguage

English

Journal_Title

Selected Topics in Quantum Electronics, IEEE Journal of

Publisher

ieee

ISSN

1077-260X

Type

jour

DOI

10.1109/JSTQE.2014.2312952

Filename

6776423